The project began in 1998 and is conducted by the government of Iceland. At this point (February 2008) the project is half-finished and rulings have been passed concerning areas covering about half of Iceland's territory. From the beginning, research has been closely connected to the NAI, which keeps all the major sources of proprietary rights in Iceland from the earliest of times (12th century) until the 20th century. Most of those sources have been created after 1800. Various records have been systematically scanned in order to explore proprietary rights, including church records, court records, property documents, and real estate evaluations, as well as the archives of government offices of various administrative levels. As those resources are scanned, their content is recorded in databases in order to increase accessibility. This will improve access for scholars as well as the public to those records after the research project has been completed. This is by far the most extensive project of its kind that has ever been undertaken in Iceland.